


A Small Twist Of Fate

by Pargoletta



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, Eye Trauma, Immortality, Love, M/M, Napoleonic Wars, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:47:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26636836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pargoletta/pseuds/Pargoletta
Summary: As the autumn of 1812 fades into winter, the only three immortals dwelling in the world navigate life in Berlin under Napoleon’s occupation.  But the birth of a new immortal is an event so momentous that it will tear their carefully constructed reality apart and send them on a thousand-mile journey into frozen, devastated Russia.  Attempting to find one lost French soldier with only dreams to guide them, while avoiding the predations of Napoleon’s retreat, Nico and Josef and Andromache must draw on all of their spiritual and material resources, knowing that this journey will change their lives forever.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 54
Kudos: 147





	1. And She Dreams When She Sleeps

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, and welcome to this story! I was impressed at how well the Old Guard handled the discovery, retrieval, and welcome of Nile, especially considering that there aren’t very many opportunities to practice that kind of event. It got me to wondering how they might have fared the last time they had to do it, when Booker became immortal. So here is that story.
> 
> Berlin, where they begin the story, was at the time the capital city of the Kingdom of Prussia, and had been conquered by Napoleon in 1806. As far as I can tell, the worst of the occupation was over by about 1810, although the city was still occupied and largely under French control two years later. Madame Levy, whom you’ll meet in this chapter, was a real person (she was Felix Mendelssohn’s great-aunt), and she really did run a musical salon in Berlin that survived the onset of the occupation, partly by becoming more like a series of house concerts than a social gathering of intellectuals. There are a number of other historical details here, but I won’t go into them now. If you’re curious, just ask. Meanwhile, enjoy the story, and I’ll meet you at the end!

  1. **And She Dreams When She Sleeps**



Nico woke slowly from uneasy dreams in the chill of an early November morning. His nose was cold, but the rest of him was deliciously warm, nestled in the pillows and featherbed, Josef providing a solid wall of warmth against his back, and the whole enclosed by the quilted counterpane. Thin, gray daylight shone through the gap where the curtains had been closed too hastily the night before. Nico blinked and yawned, but made no move to leave his warm cocoon. Behind him, he felt Josef shifting as he also came awake. Josef’s arm tightened around Nico, and Nico turned over in Josef’s embrace so that he could bestow the first kiss of the morning on Josef’s lips.

“Mmm, good morning, my Nico,” Josef said.

Nico smiled. “It is a good morning. The air is cold and bracing, and you are warm and comforting.”

“That is as it should be, then.” Josef rolled them over so that he lay on top of Nico, adding his solid weight to the security of Nico’s nest. They exchanged lazy kisses for a few minutes, but other morning duties beckoned soon enough. Josef rolled out of bed and went to wash and dress before his morning prayer. Nico donned a banyan against the chill and opened the curtains to admit some light into the room. Berthold, his valet, had already lit the fire, and he extended his hands over its crackling warmth.

Josef finished washing, and dressed quickly. Nico helped him to button his braces, and then took his turn at the bowl as Josef unrolled the small rug that lived in the armoire and knelt to pray. By the time he had finished his prayer, Nico was ready for help with his own braces and with the simple gathered stock that he wore rather than fiddle with the knot on a cravat. Josef kissed the nape of his neck just before he buttoned the stock. “There,” he said. “That will be with you for the rest of the day.”

Nico smiled. “What will you do now?”

Josef glanced out the window. “There is a quality to the light this morning,” he said. “I will go to my studio and sketch.” He pulled his own banyan over his waistcoat. “You?”

Nico hesitated. It had been on the tip of his tongue to announce that he would go riding in the Tiergarten, but a more powerful urge overtook him. “I wish to attend the morning Mass at St. Hedwig today,” he said. “It won’t be long.”

Josef smiled at him, but did not comment on his sudden desire to attend a weekday Mass. “As long as you do not tarry afterwards to bestow professional advice upon the priest.”

“I have not done that in two hundred years,” Nico said with a laugh.

“Another fifty, and I might just be able to set foot in Lisbon again without blushing,” Josef retorted, stroking a finger down Nico’s cheek to smooth the sting from his words. Nico kissed him and called for Berthold to bring his coat, his hat, and his cane.

On a Tuesday morning, the Mass was sparsely attended, and the priest’s voice echoed under the enormous dome of St. Hedwig. Nico shared the space with several French officers, and he took care to avert his gaze. Napoleon’s forces had occupied Berlin for six years already, and in that time, Nico had learned how to avoid unnecessary confrontations. It had taken those six years, a slit throat behind a university pub and an unforgettable scolding from both Josef and Andromache after he had returned home in the dead of night with his shirt, his stock, and his waistcoat soaked in his own blood, but he had learned. St. Hedwig was a large space, and it was easy enough to avoid the French officers this morning.

The priest, for his part, was placid and calming, and hearing Mass did seem to be exactly what Nico needed. Afterwards, he took the long way home so that he could walk along the banks of the Spree and enjoy the fresh air. By the time he arrived, he could feel his face glowing, and he was eager for breakfast. Berthold took his coat, hat, and cane with an expression that seemed to Nico as if he were hiding a smile beneath his professional reserve.

Andromache came to greet him first, with a kiss to both of his cheeks. “Good morning, Nico,” she said. “You look like you have an appetite. Breakfast is ready.”

Nico followed Andromache into the drawing room, where Josef waited at the table while Cook and Andromache’s maid Gretchen brought the last of the food to the sideboard. Cook set a teapot and a pot of hot chocolate under cozies, and then she and Gretchen withdrew and left the family to themselves. They helped themselves to rolls, eggs, slices of cheese, and hot drinks and settled down at the table.

“What are your plans for the day?” Andromache asked. “I want to be able to consult with Cook about what time to serve dinner.”

“I will do the household accounts today,” Josef said. “If Nico will sign them before we retire tonight, we may pay our bills tomorrow.”

“Good.” Nico nodded. “I am expected at the home of Freiherr von Hardenberg at noon for Charlotte’s Italian lesson.”

“And how is little Charlotte progressing?” Andromache asked with a smile.

Nico spread butter on a roll and topped it with strawberry preserves. “It is remotely possible that, by the time she grows to be a young lady and travels to Florence and asks for a slice of cake, she will receive a slice of cake instead of a tortoise.”

Josef laughed out loud at that. “It will not be for your lack of diligence in teaching her.”

“Perhaps.” Nico took a sip of hot chocolate to cover his own smile. “All the same, I do hope that she receives suitors seeking young ladies accomplished in arts other than the modern languages. Speaking of which, Madame Levy’s salon will meet at two. Do you wish to accompany me?”

“To Madame Levy’s? Of course,” Josef said. “Will she perform today?”

“I believe so. She promises Sebastian Bach on the pianoforte. Andromache?”

Andromache worried a bit of cheese between her fingers. “As much as I admire Madame Levy and her persistence in maintaining her salon in these times, I cannot bring myself to enjoy Sebastian Bach as she does. I shall be At Home to receive calls today.”

While Andromache did actually receive social calls from other ladies in the neighborhood during her days At Home, Nico and Josef both knew that she received other, far less ladylike, visitors as well. “You will tell us if there is news from Russia?” Josef asked.

“Of course.”

They finished their breakfast and moved on to the next activities of the day.

Charlotte von Hardenberg was nine years old, and much more interested in her dollies and her new printed paper toy theater than in learning Italian. When Nico arrived at the von Hardenberg home, Charlotte’s mother had just ordered the toy theater put away over Charlotte’s loud protests. Inspiration struck, and Nico requested that the toy theater be brought back for the lesson.

“You know that some of the finest operas are in Italian,” he told Charlotte. “Shall we make our own little opera for your mama and your nurse? What figures have we here?”

Freifrau von Hardenberg looked dubious, but Charlotte clapped her hands, which was more excitement than she had ever shown over her Italian lessons. Nico laid the little paper figurines out on the table and encouraged Charlotte to tell him who they were in her halting Italian. Freifrau von Hardenberg watched for a moment before throwing up her hands and walking out of the schoolroom. Nico and Charlotte worked together, and an hour later, they presented the Drama of the Mushroom Princess and the Water-Carrier to a bemused audience consisting of Freifrau von Hardenberg, Charlotte’s nurse, her younger brother Max, her older sister Sidonie, who had been called from her harp lesson for the occasion, and her kitten Hilda.

At the conclusion of the drama, Charlotte looked unusually pleased with her efforts, and Freifrau von Hardenberg looked as though she could not decide whether she had just witnessed a miracle or a soul-destroying abomination. It was a look that Nico had seen many times over the centuries, and he made his farewells with as much haste as grace, pleading a pressing engagement. When he told Josef about the lesson on their way to Madame Levy’s, Josef laughed out loud.

“From everything that you have told me about the Hardenberg household, I would say that it was an act of courage and compassion in one. But I think it will be good for the child to see that there is more to art than mere ladylike accomplishment.”

They crossed the bridge onto the island in the Spree, and came swiftly to Madame Levy’s house. Her footman showed them in and took their hats and canes. A small crowd had already gathered in the drawing room, and Madame Levy, fashionable, middle-aged, and self-assured, emerged from it to welcome her latest guests with kisses and smiles.

“Nicolò and Josef,” she said. “How lovely to see you! Our gathering is nearly complete. Come in, come in. There is a new guest you must meet.” She steered them into the drawing room and into the company of a short, balding man of roughly her own age. Josef stepped back a bit, and caught Madame Levy’s eye. She gave no outward sign that she had noticed, but Nico knew her, and he knew that her social sense was as keen as her musical ear, and she had not missed Josef’s signal. She laid a delicate hand on Nico’s shoulder.

“Nicolò di Genova, I give you Herr Carl-Friedrich Leidenfrost,” she said. “He is an esteemed lawyer who has recently been introduced to our little gathering. Nicolò is a gentleman and a friend of this group for several years.”

Leidenfrost offered a firm handshake as Madame Levy was called away to greet more guests. “A pleasure to meet you, sir,” he said. “Now, then, di Genova. Italian, of course. What brings you to Berlin?”

This was a delicate moment. Madame Levy had forbidden outright political discussion in her salon – it was one of the reasons that the salon was still going – but there were always veiled ways to find out where one’s conversational partner stood. And, as it happened, Nico’s assumed history was one of them.

“I was born in the Republic of Genoa,” he said. “My family was wealthy and landed. I was only a boy when the Jacobins deposed the Doge and Napoleon declared the Republic of Liguria. My parents were killed during that revolution. I was spirited out of the city and taken here to Berlin to live in the care of my Aunt Andromache, and that is where I remain.”

“A tragic tale,” Leidenfrost replied. “Yet you seem to have done well enough for yourself.”

Nico shrugged. “There is a small income from some land near Potsdam,” he said, neglecting to mention that Andromache and Quynh had claimed that particular piece of forest in 1334, and had collected hunting and grazing fees on the land ever since. “And I give lessons in Italian to some of the young ladies in the area to help defray expenses.”

“Hm,” Leidenfrost said. “Well, you are a resourceful young man, I’ll give you that. And you are very clever to know where to put your trust and your loyalty. With the proper guiding hand, you could do very well in life, see your aunt settled. Perhaps we ought to speak further after the music.”

At that moment, Josef appeared at Nico’s elbow, carrying two cups of tea and wearing a smile that was only mildly predatory. He handed one of the cups to Nico. “You’ve made a new acquaintance,” he observed.

Nico smiled. “Herr Leidenfrost, may I present my companion, Josef. Herr Leidenfrost is new to this gathering. Madame Levy introduced us.”

Leidenfrost’s bushy eyebrows rose. “Ah, Josef . . .” He waited expectantly for further details, and perhaps a surname.

Nico’s smile never wavered. “Josef is an artist,” he supplied.

Leidenfrost did not offer his hand to Josef, but gave him a crisp nod. “A pleasure to meet you,” he said gravely. “May I inquire . . . your family is . . . you are from . . .”

“I am an artist,” Josef said. “Lately, I have completed several landscapes, but my true passion is portraiture. And I accompany Nicolò.” He slid his arm around Nico’s waist.

Several highly interesting expressions fought for room on Leidenfrost’s face, but he had no time to settle on any of them. Madame Levy clapped her hands and announced that it was time for the music to begin. Her guests took their seats, and she settled herself at the pianoforte and announced that the afternoon’s entertainment would consist of selections from the _Musical Offering_ of Sebastian Bach. Nico and Josef sat together on a delicate couch and lost themselves in the music.

They told Andromache all about the salon over dinner. She snorted at their tale of Herr Leidenfrost in a most unladylike manner. “I know only what you have told me of this man, and yet I am entirely certain that he has a daughter,” she said.

Josef smiled broadly. “She is just twenty-one years of age, of course, gracious and accomplished in . . . Nico, what would you guess of her accomplishments?”

Nico took a bite of his roast and considered the question for a moment. “Music, almost certainly,” he said. “That is why her dear father is trolling for suitors among the guests at a musical salon. A language, possibly two. And dancing. All the young ladies learn dancing.”

“Perhaps she draws as well,” Andromache suggested.

Josef shrugged. “If she does, then her father considers it a minor accomplishment at best,” he said. “He was hardly impressed by your acquaintance with an artist skilled in both landscape and portraiture.”

That drew a real smile out of Nico. “I would say rather he was less than impressed that a potential suitor for his daughter keeps company with a mysterious Moor whose hands are entirely too familiar for his comfort.”

“I was feeling kindly,” Josef said. “It was plain that he had made some effort to visit Madame Levy’s salon, and it seemed best to convey the futility of his efforts sooner rather than later.” He ran his finger over the edge of Nico’s ear, and a little shiver of warmth ran through Nico at his touch. He smiled at Josef and then turned back to Andromache.

“What of your afternoon?” he asked. “Did you receive any visits of interest?”

“I did.” Andromache signaled to Gretchen that it was time to bring in the dessert, which consisted of a compote of pears with sweet biscuits to accompany it. After Gretchen had changed the plates and left the dining room, Andromache told Nico and Josef about what she had learned from a visitor whose son served on the staff of Berlin’s French tax collector.

Ten days earlier, it seemed, Napoleon’s _Grande Armée_ had encountered General Dmitri Dokhturov, Field Marshal Kutuzov, and a combined force of infantry and cavalry at a small town called Maloyaroslavets, southwest of Moscow. The French appeared to have won the battle, but their route south was blocked. “Their retreat is to the west now,” Andromache said. “I suppose the Emperor intends to winter his army at Smolensk.”

“Do I recall correctly that he burned Smolensk a little over two months past?” Josef put in.

Andromache smiled, showing her sharp white teeth. “He did. And winter has already arrived in that part of the world. He does not respect the will of the land, and he will find things . . . unpleasant, should he arrive.”

There were moments when Nico wondered if Andromache felt any kinship with the Russian people who now inhabited the land that had once been Scythia. But now, seeing the flash in her eyes when she pronounced Napoleon’s doom, he had no doubt at all of her pride in these new caretakers of her ancient homeland.

Sometimes, Nico asked Charlotte to describe her family’s daily routine in Italian. From what he could extract from her muddled answers, he suspected that the von Hardenberg family often spent their evenings engaged in cards or conversation, pausing occasionally to shoo Charlotte back to her bed. He wondered if Freiherr von Hardenberg might prefer to spend the evening as he and Josef and Andromache did that day, poring over maps of Russia and trying to determine what Napoleon’s likely route back across Europe might be. “If they return through Berlin, their numbers will be smaller than they were back in 1806,” Andromache said. “His return may be less severe than his first visit.”

Nico desperately hoped that that was true. His head was spinning with all of the different possibilities that they had debated, and his dinner had turned to a cold lump in his stomach. There was something about the indecisive Battle of Maloyaroslavets and the image of the _Grande Armée_ marching back west, decimated but still vicious, that reminded him of storm clouds gathering on the horizon. He summoned Berthold and ordered that the fire be lit in his bedroom. He did not want to think about how soon he might have to give up the pleasure of having a bedroom.

Later, Nico knelt by the bed in his shirt and banyan, trying to pray, but unable to find God through the shadow in his mind. Josef seemed to be having better success in his own prayers, and Nico was glad of that. But when Josef finished, he rolled his prayer rug and stowed it in the armoire with a heavy sigh.

“Bugger the French,” he said.

Ah. Nico could work with that. He rose from his knees, shed his banyan, and sat down on the bed. “They are far away,” he said. “But perhaps . . . their Ligurian vassals might suffice?”

A slow smile spread over Josef’s face, and he came to stand before Nico. “Do I know any Ligurian vassals who might be of assistance in this matter?”

Nico reached for the buttons of Josef’s breeches. “It may be possible to find one. If you know where to look.”

Afterwards, they slept, Nico cradled in the curve of Josef’s body. The fire died down to embers and then went cold.

_The man’s breath was a cloud before his face, and the stars above him glittered in the cold night air. He raced through the marsh, his heart pounding in his throat, gasping out short, nonsensical prayers and pleas for his life to la vierge Marie, la Mère de Dieu. Nico looked through the man’s eyes as he ran, panicked and directionless, knowing only that he must escape the soldiers that hunted him._

_He turned, and he was the soldiers, officers of the Grande Armée, thundering through the marsh on horseback. The deserter was on foot, and he would tire soon enough. The trick was to capture him before the Cossacks did._

_A sentence, pronounced in French, short and harsh, even in that language._

_The road was lined with burning equipment wagons and scattered bodies. The town burned in the distance, lighting the sky with an eerie glow. The sun would not rise for hours, and he would not live to see the dawn._

_His former comrades-in-arms stood in a ring, sleepy and dazed, rousted from their bedrolls to witness the consequences of desertion._

_The thin voice of the chaplain broke the silence, as the man intoned a Psalm._

_The rifles of the firing squad gleamed in the light of the stars and of the burning town._

_Bullets tore through him, and he fell to the ground, staring at the cold, dark sky, as his life bled out onto the frozen ground._

_Nico watched the execution and screamed in pain and terror._


	2. And She Wakes Brokenhearted

  1. **And She Wakes Brokenhearted**



Nico woke in the middle of a scream, fighting to escape the pain of the bullets tearing through flesh. Josef woke at the same instant and reached for Nico, clasping him firmly to his chest, and burying his nose in Nico’s hair. Nico shivered, and Josef moaned. The warmth of the counterpane and the bedlinens could not penetrate the chill of the frozen ground that lurked in their minds. The fire had gone out.

There was a sharp knock on the door. Without waiting for either of them to answer, Andromache opened the door and strode into the bedroom. She wore only her linen chemise, and her hair was in a single rumpled braid down her back. She carried a candle, which she set on the top of the closed secretary before she climbed onto the bed to embrace Nico and Josef.

“Did you dream?” she asked.

Nico nodded, and could not speak.

“There was a man,” Josef choked out. “He was shot.”

Nico glanced up from Andromache’s embrace. Over her shoulder, he spied Gretchen and Berthold, both in their nightclothes, standing in the doorway, peering anxiously into the room. Andromache noticed his gaze and followed it.

“Berthold,” she said, with only a slight tremor in her voice, “come and light the fire. We need warmth. Then you and Gretchen may return to bed. We will be well. I know what has happened.”

“Very good, Madame.” Berthold brushed the ashes of the old fire aside and swiftly laid a new one. As the new fire came to life, its warmth and light released some of the tension inside Nico, and he relaxed into Andromache’s arms, holding Josef’s hands.

Andromache waited until Berthold and Gretchen had left them alone before she spoke. “We have to remember,” she said. “Tell me, before it fades. He was French. A deserter, I think.”

“Running through a marsh,” Nico said. “How did you know that?”

“He had blue eyes,” Josef added. “And a strong nose.”

“A town was burning,” Nico said. “Supply wagons, too.”

Andromache nodded. “The French are on the move. It’s likely there was neither time nor discipline for a full court martial.”

“All of his comrades – former comrades, I suppose – were woken up to witness his execution,” Nico said. “Have we all dreamed the same dream?”

Andromache nodded. “We did. Josef, do you remember his face?”

Josef rubbed his eyes. “The face of a man staring down the barrels of the rifles aimed to execute him? I cannot imagine that I would ever forget it.”

“You will,” Andromache said. “Unless you commit it to paper. Have you supplies in this room?”

“I do.” Josef squeezed Nico’s hands, then rose from the bed and searched among the drawers of the secretary where Andromache had placed her candle. “I have paper, quill and ink.”

“Good,” Andromache said. “Draw his face, as lifelike as you can. You do not fully understand what has happened. I suppose it was to be expected. It has been seven hundred years, now that I think upon it. Anyone might forget. And you have been the youngest for so long.”

Josef held the inkwell near the candle to warm the ink a little. Andromache released Nico and went to sit closer to the fire. Nico draped his own banyan over her, and she smiled at him.

“Do you remember the years before Quynh and I found you?” she asked.

Nico nodded. They had been years of wonder and pain, a crucible that had burned away the dross of his former self, leaving both utter desolation and transcendent love in its wake. And there had been something else as well. “I dreamed of you,” he said. “Josef did, too. We used to debate whether you were angels sent to guide our path.”

Andromache snorted out something that was almost a laugh. “That would have been easier for all of us. Perhaps you have forgotten that Quynh and I dreamed of you as well.”

Nico blinked in surprise. Josef looked up from his sketch. “I had forgotten,” Nico said softly.

“When did your dreams start?” Josef asked.

Andromache looked at them with enormous compassion. “They began when you died. We dreamed your deaths. Each and every one of them. So you must imagine that we were both quite relieved when you chose the path of love rather than hatred.”

Josef looked uncomfortable. “Did you feel us dying? In your dreams?”

Andromache nodded. Nico and Josef stared at each other, and Nico saw his own rising horror reflected in Josef’s face. He rose to his feet and went to look at the sketch Josef had made. As he had feared, it was the face that he had seen in his dreams, staring at a rifle squad in the light of burning wagons. “You dreamed our deaths, and you found us. We have all dreamed the death of the same man tonight,” he said. “Does this . . . this cannot mean . . .”

“There is another like us,” Josef finished.

“Yes,” Andromache said. “I cannot say why, or how it has come to be, but this deserter is of our own blood now. We will dream of him until we meet. That is the way of it.”

Nico looked at Josef’s drawing again. He could not discern whether the Frenchman was kind or vicious, noble or common, a man of honor or a rake. He was simply a man, weary and resigned, but still capable of fear. And, as Nico and Josef had done over seven hundred years earlier, the Frenchman would wake and find himself utterly bereft of friends, comrades, or any of the structures that defined normal human existence. He would be left only with dreams of their faces, three strangers far away in Prussia.

“We must find him,” he said softly. “Perhaps we are all that he has.”

Josef nodded. “He has a handsome face, but I do not care to dream about him every night until the end of time.”

Andromache sighed and turned a resigned, yet grateful smile on both of them. “How you have changed from the desperate brawlers I dreamed with Quynh. You know what this will mean for us, for our lives here in Berlin, and yet neither of you hesitate to do what is right.”

Nico and Josef glanced at each other. Nico was just beginning to appreciate the full meaning of the Frenchman’s appearance. They would have to find him, though they did not know his name or where he was or anything about him save only that he had been a soldier in the _Grande Armée_ , lost somewhere a thousand miles away in the marshlands of western Russia. They would have to leave their home behind, severing all ties to friends and acquaintances. There would be no more Tuesday afternoons at Madame Levy’s salon, and no more Italian lessons with Charlotte von Hardenberg. Even Gretchen, Berthold, and Cook would have to be cast out to find new employment. “We cannot return to Berlin with him,” Nico said, half to himself and half to the others.

“No.” Andromache shook her head sadly. “It was coming on time to leave in any event, but I admit that I had hoped for another year or two. It will not be tomorrow, as we must have time to determine where to begin our search, but . . . yes. When we set out to find our Frenchman, we will leave this life behind us. But we will travel together to seek him out. After we find him, we will determine what to do then, but for now, we three remain.”

She rose from her seat and embraced them both in turn. “My courageous warrior brothers. Sleep now, if you can. If you dream of our Frenchman again, commit the details to paper. They will be our only guide to him.”

The rest of the day assumed the hushed quality of a house of mourning. In a way, Nico supposed, they were mourning the loss of their quiet existence. But that was the way of their lives. There was always a new war to be fought, new lives to be saved, and new homes with new names and new histories. He and Josef and Andromache sat together in the drawing room for much of that first day, making plans for how they would leave Berlin when the time came. Andromache estimated that they had little more than a week.

“We know that the Frenchman ran from a battle,” she said. “News should reach Berlin within a few days with details of where the battle might have been. We will know where to begin our search then.”

To cover their departure, they decided that Andromache would be taken ill, and would need to travel to take a mineral cure. They would both spread and reinforce this story by asking friends and acquaintances to recommend the perfect place for a cure. The sale of their home and their furniture would pay for the journey and for the purchase of suitable traveling clothes and weaponry.

The effort of planning made them hungry, and Andromache called for light sandwiches at half past one. Gretchen brought the tray and hesitantly inquired if they were recovered from the disturbance in the night. Nico pressed his lips together and fumbled for Josef’s hand as Andromache assured Gretchen that everything was well for the moment.

“We must provide them with excellent letters of reference,” he said, after Gretchen had left the room. “Gretchen, and Berthold, and Cook. They have served so well and so diligently. We must not leave them without resources.”

“We will not,” Andromache assured him. “I will write the letters myself, while I am confined indoors pretending to be deathly ill. You and Josef will divide the rest of the preparations, as we have discussed.”

Josef spent several evenings frequenting the less reputable cafés in Berlin that catered largely to artists, students, and other politically-minded folk. He had many friends at these establishments, and now he went as much to say farewell as to gather bits of news about Napoleon’s slow retreat from Moscow. He reported that, in between laments that he would never have the chance to meet Josef’s mysterious lover, a fellow portraitist by the name of Hans Fleischmann had told him of rumors that Napoleon’s retreat towards Smolensk had been reversed at a town called Vyazma a few days earlier. The French had burned the town to cover their final retreat.

“It seems that _le petit caporal_ may now regret the damage he wrought between Smolensk and Moscow,” Josef said, as they pored over a map one morning. “The French supplies are fast running out, and desertion grows more frequent.”

“Ours was not the only deserter, then,” Nico said. “Thanks to you, we have his portrait. That is something, at least.”

Andromache ran her finger over the map. “And now we know better where to begin our search. It seems clear that our Frenchman died outside of Vyazma. He will surely attempt to reach Smolensk.”

Josef frowned. “Is that wise?” he asked. “That is where the _Grande Armée_ travels as well. It would not go well for our Frenchman if he were to encounter his commanding officers again so soon after his execution for desertion.”

“No, it is not wise,” Andromache said with a smile. “But I think it is what he will do regardless. He knows nothing of the region, and it is very likely that he does not speak Russian. He wishes to return to France, and the route he knows will lead him through Smolensk.” Her finger brushed back and forth between Smolensk and Vyazma on the map. “This is where we will begin our search.”

For his part, Nico let it be known among his acquaintances that his dear Aunt Andromache had been taken ill, and that, after consulting with a highly specialist physician, he would sell all of his worldly possessions to take her for a mineral cure. As he had expected, most of the people he knew were more interested in the destination than the physician. He gave them the name of a small town in the Lithuanian part of Poland that had potent mineral springs, but no dedicated spa facilities. “My aunt requires peace and quiet as well as the baths,” he explained.

Freiherr von Hardenberg told him to his face that he was a fool to travel east while Napoleon was retreating west. Freifrau von Hardenberg lamented the loss of a gentleman of quality to teach Charlotte’s Italian lessons, and Nico took the opportunity to suggest that other accomplishments, such as botany or filigree work, might suit Charlotte’s temperament better than Italian. For her part, Charlotte burst into tears and threw her arms around Nico at the news that he would be leaving them. He stroked her carefully curled hair and let her weep for a short time, and then reminded her of the morning they had spent telling the tale of the Mushroom Princess and the Water-Carrier.

“You must continue to tell their story,” he told her, “even if I am not present to hear it.”

Charlotte ran to her toy theater and picked up one of the paper figurines, a rather foppish young man with long curls and a tall hat. “This one will be the Mushroom Princess’s new friend,” she said. “His name will be di Genova.”

Nico smiled. “He is a fine addition to the tale. I hope that he has many wonderful adventures with the Mushroom Princess and the Water-Carrier.”

Nico and Josef both went to bid farewell to Madame Levy. She received the news of their imminent departure with resigned sadness, but did not mourn in their presence. “It is the way of the world,” she told them. “Too often have I heard the histories of friends and family forced to leave their homes suddenly. I am merely grateful to have the opportunity to bid you both farewell and to tell you that our gatherings will be the poorer for your loss.”

She went to her secretary and rummaged around in the drawers for a moment before extracting several pieces of sheet music. These she rolled and tied carefully and presented to Nico and Josef. “This is a copy that I have made of the Unfinished Fugue by Sebastian Bach,” she said. “To remind you that, though your tale is not yet complete, still there are moments of great beauty to be found in it.”

She embraced Nico and Josef and kissed them on both cheeks. As they left her house, Nico was already thinking of the safest way to store the Unfinished Fugue for traveling.

Nico’s final farewell was to the priest at St. Hedwig. In the relative privacy of one of the cathedral’s small chapels, he confessed his grief at having to leave the home that he and Josef and Andromache had built for themselves, as well as his apprehension about what the coming weeks might bring for them.

The priest was warm and sympathetic, even though Nico had not told him any specific details about the upcoming journey. “You have a trial ahead of you, Nicolò my son,” the priest said. “I do not know what that trial will be, although I have met your lady aunt, and I do not believe for an instant that she is at all as ill as you claim.”

Nico gave a wry smile of acknowledgement. The priest chuckled a little.

“Still, I am sure that you have your reasons for wishing to conceal the nature of your journey, and I will honor those reasons,” he said. “And so all I will tell you is this. Though I have known you for only a few years, I know that you are a man of love above all else. Remember that, as you travel. It is far too easy for men to encounter each other with hatred. Instead, I charge you to offer those you will meet on your road love even though they may meet you with hatred.”

Nico nodded solemnly. “I will do that, Father. Thank you.”

“Come, kneel in prayer, and I will give you a blessing for your journey.”

So Nico knelt at the priest’s feet. The priest laid hands on his head and uttered words of kindness, love, and good wishes for the road that lay ahead of him.

At last, a little over a week after a French deserter had been executed on the road outside Vyazma, Nico and Josef and Andromache were ready to go and find him. Berthold and Gretchen and Cook had departed from the house with generous purses and glowing references to help them find new positions. Josef had sold the remainder of his artworks to a dealer. Much of the furniture had been sold at auction, and the house itself was in the hands of a trusted agent, recommended by Madame Levy, who would sell it and deposit the proceeds in a carefully selected bank account.

Nico purchased tickets for them on a coach that would take them as far as Tilsit, just at the border of the Russian Empire, over the course of a week. They left Berlin just before dawn, with a communal trunk containing their treasured blades and small valises for clothes and other necessities. Andromache wore a fur-trimmed wool pelisse over her coaching gown, though she expected to change these for shirts and long military trousers upon arriving in Tilsit.

Nico carried the Unfinished Fugue in the lining of his valise, and Josef carried drawing paper and a metal box of pencils and pen knives to sharpen them. As Andromache had predicted, their dreams had not abated since the night after the battle of Vyazma, and Josef spent hours on the road sketching both images from his own dreams and details that Nico and Andromache shared from theirs. Although they had not met him, all three began to feel that they knew their Frenchman intimately, in a way that no one else in the world could.

Their Frenchman – and it was clear from the bits of his uniform that floated in their dreams that he was in fact French – seemed to spend quite a bit of his time lost, or drunk, or both. He offered labor at small farms in exchange for food and vodka. Sometimes his offer was accepted. Other times, he was spat at and kicked back onto the road. Twice, he was murdered. All three of them jolted awake in a coaching inn one night after their Frenchman had been impaled on a pitchfork, and Nico scrambled to find the chamber pot so that Josef could throw up his dinner. He was almost glad when a farmer slit their Frenchman’s throat in his sleep a few nights later; feeling him bleed to death in seconds was messy, but much shorter than enduring his agony on the tines of the pitchfork.

By the time they arrived in Tilsit, they were exhausted, filthy from the road, and desperate for a solid meal. Andromache secured rooms at the coaching inn, but warned Nico and Josef that they might be in Tilsit for some time, and it would be better to have less expensive accommodation. The inn provided a warm, filling meal of large dumplings made with potatoes, ground meat, and mushrooms with a creamy sauce, and they were able to wash the dust of travel off of their bodies before they collapsed into bed.

Their Frenchman froze to death in the night. Josef curled himself a little closer around Nico, and Nico murmured a prayer for their Frenchman’s soul, but neither of them woke fully. In the morning, they went out and were able to rent rooms from an elderly couple whose son had been killed fighting against Napoleon. They had worried about fuel for the winter, and Nico and Josef agreed to help split wood to supplement their meager supply of coal. In return, the elderly couple gave them rooms in the servants’ quarters of the house at a reduced rate, and even produced a few of their son’s clothes for Andromache.

“A woman traveling in these parts should take every precaution,” the wife said, “even when she has two handsome young men to accompany her.”

“Thank you,” Andromache said. “I appreciate your kindness.” They did not reveal any of their blades to their hosts, especially not Andromache’s labrys.

They stayed in those rented rooms for nearly two weeks, making themselves useful splitting wood or helping the elderly wife finish pickling and salting food for the winter. At night, Nico and Josef held each other close through their dreams, and in the morning, they would write and draw what they had seen in those dreams. And then, finally, one night their Frenchman stumbled to the outskirts of a real town. Now that they had more identifiable images of his surroundings, the real hunt could begin.


	3. Be Steadfast In Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick heads-up . . . if you spotted the tag for "Eye Trauma," this is the chapter where it becomes relevant!

  1. **Be Steadfast In Time**



Josef had made dozens of sketches of their Frenchman’s face, so many that Nico and Andromache were sure that they would recognize him on sight. Now that their Frenchman had reached a town, Josef concentrated on looking through his eyes and drawing the buildings and the streets that he could see. Many of the buildings were anonymous, burnt-out husks, and a disturbing number of homeless women and children huddled together in their shadows. The images reminded Nico uncomfortably of the aftermath of the victory for which he had died in Jerusalem. He sought out little moments during the day when he could embrace Josef or rest his head against Josef’s for a moment, just so that he could breathe Josef’s scent and repeat to himself the priest’s charge to meet hatred with love.

Eventually, Josef produced a drawing of a large cathedral, built in the style of the previous century. It had five domed spires, elegant false columns, and round windows just below its eaves. Although Josef did not sketch with colors, Nico and Andromache both knew that the cathedral walls were a brilliant sky blue. This was a distinctive image that they could show around Tilsit. Sure enough, a Jewish refugee living nearby recognized the building. It was the Cathedral of the Dormition in Smolensk, a city he had visited while in the timber trade.

Andromache told Nico and Josef to make themselves ready to leave Tilsit, but she delayed the actual departure for several days. “It will do us no good if we set out for Smolensk and arrive just as our Frenchman departs,” she said. “We should be sure that he intends to stay, at least for the days that it will cost us to travel there.”

Still, Nico and Josef went to inquire about how best to travel to Smolensk. All of the coachmen they asked laughed in their faces, and would not be persuaded to take them into Russia and the arms of Napoleon’s retreat for any amount of money. But eventually, they found a man willing to sell them a wagon and a team of horses.

“It’s your own lives you’re risking,” the man told them. “I wouldn’t go for love or money. But if you should encounter the French bastards along the way, make sure you take a few of them to Hell with you.”

Josef laughed. “We shall be sure to do so.”

He and Nico climbed onto the wagon seat, and Nico took the reins for the drive back to their lodgings. As the wagon rattled through the streets, dark thoughts began to roll around in his head.

“Do you think that he believes his cause to be just?” he asked, without quite meaning to.

“Who?” Josef replied. “The man who sold us this wagon? It was a fair trade, I think. Solid, better sprung than I would have expected.”

Nico shook his head. “Our Frenchman. Do you think he believes, with Napoleon, that the whole world should be under French rule?”

“Perhaps,” Josef said. “Or he could believe that he is simply on an extended adventure to see the world. Who knows what goes through the minds of a soldier in a conqueror’s army?”

“I do,” Nico said softly.

Josef was quiet for a moment. “Do you know, I had nearly forgotten about that. It is a strange thing, what the centuries will do to one’s memory.”

“I have not forgotten.”

“What did you believe, when you sailed for Jerusalem?” Josef’s question was solemn, but Nico could hear the depth of the love behind it. He considered his answer for a while before he spoke.

“I know that there were some in my company who did believe with their whole hearts that Jerusalem was destined to come under the power of the Bishop of Rome,” he said. “And I will not tell you a lie. The journey was exciting, at first. I had never been so far away from home before.” He could not suppress a tiny smile at the memory of his first glimpse of the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea.

Josef’s eyes glowed with some emotion too complicated for Nico to name. “You have always enjoyed seeing new places. But come now. I have known you for seven hundred years, and I know that you have not answered my question. What did you believe about your purpose in taking that ship so far away from home?”

Nico steered the horses into a small side street and brought them to a halt, half afraid that he might cry and be unable to see where they were going. He gripped the reins in his fist and held them as if they had life that he could choke out of them. Josef said nothing, but laid his warm hand over Nico’s and waited.

“I believed that, if I went to Jerusalem, God might love me,” Nico murmured.

Josef did not reply immediately, but put his arm around Nico’s waist and encouraged Nico to lean against him. Nico took a few deep breaths as the inevitable memories of the rage, terror, and bloody confusion of his first real battle and the silence that had greeted him afterwards swept through him.

Josef tightened his arm a little. “Does God love you now?” he asked, and Nico heard nothing but simple curiosity in the question.

He thought about the hours he had spent on his knees pleading for answers about his continued existence on this earth, the years of his life he had spent wondering if he was choosing good or evil, and the many times he had watched men act from the most virtuous of intentions to produce the greatest of evil circumstances. He thought of Andromache, and of Quynh, of the stories they had told him about Lykon. He thought of Madame Levy, who embraced him and wished him well, and of Charlotte von Hardenberg, who had cried over his departure. He remembered the kind eyes and soft words of the priest at St. Hedwig. And, always, he thought of Josef’s warmth enveloping and filling him, the only constant in the seven centuries he had lived.

“I do not know if I would recognize it if God loved me,” he said after a while. “But I know that I am loved. Perhaps that is enough.”

“Any God who does not love you is a fool,” Josef replied. “Should you ever begin to forget that you are loved, I beg you to ask me. I will always stand ready to remind you.”

Nico took a deep breath in and blew it out slowly, noting the cloud that it made in the cold air of early December. “Thank you,” he said. “We should return to our lodgings now. Andromache must surely be wondering what has become of us.”

Josef dropped a kiss on Nico’s temple and released him. Nico clucked to the horses, and the wagon once again trundled through the streets of Tilsit.

After three nights in which they dreamed only of the cold and hard stone floors, Nico suggested that it was time to move on toward Smolensk. “Winter is well under way,” he said. “If our Frenchman is at all intelligent, he will not leave a town where he has a roof over his head to strike out alone in winter in a land he does not know well. I think he will not leave Smolensk unless we take him.”

Josef and Andromache agreed. The next morning, they bade their hosts farewell, paid them the last of the rent for their room, and loaded the wagon.

This leg of their journey took them through the evergreen forests of Lithuania. Each day, they shivered with cold in the wagon, and each night, they bedded down in the barn of the first farmstead they saw after dusk. Sometimes they were able to obtain bits of news, either from their hosts or from the occasional fellow traveler they met along the way. So they were not surprised, when they stopped in Vilnius, to see that the city’s hospitals overflowed with desperately ill French soldiers.

It seemed that Napoleon had abandoned his soldiers to travel back to France. Left to its own devices, and much reduced from its former glory, the _Grande Armée_ had arrived in Vilnius and collapsed. The bulk of the soldiers had been overcome with typhus, and the stench of death and disease permeated even the chill of Lithuania in December. The worst of it was at the monastery of St. Basil, where neighbors reported that the dead were stacked like cordwood.

Upon hearing this, Andromache immediately turned on Nico and informed him that, should he even consider visiting the monastery to offer assistance, she and Josef would bind him hand and foot, and he would have to ride the rest of the way to Smolensk in the back of the wagon with their trunk and valises. “Our task is to rescue one particular Frenchman,” she said, “not the entire army.”

For his part, Josef shrugged and nodded. Nico saw no point in arguing with them over an action he had not even attempted to take, but he did take time after their evening meal to offer prayers for the souls of the dead and dying. They had been soldiers in a conquering army, but surely dying anonymously of typhus in the corridors of a foreign monastery was penance enough for most foot soldiers.

Their most significant task in Vilnius was to trade the wagon for a sleigh. The wagon had served them well enough close to the Baltic coast, but the further inland they went, the more likely they were to encounter snow and mud, and a wheeled vehicle would sink where a sleigh on runners could pass through. While Josef and Nico arranged the trade, Andromache went to every market she could find and purchased preserved food to load onto the sleigh for the rest of the trip. Although the Lithuanian farmers had been generous with their hospitality, they would soon arrive in lands where the bulk of the harvest had been burned over the summer, and no amount of hospitality would be able to provide enough for them.

It was Josef who looked at their clothing, travel-stained and thin, and suggested further trades. Fortunately, the rag-pickers of Vilnius still plied their trade. Josef and Nico’s nicer tailcoats and Andromache’s fine gowns and wool pelisse brought them enough money to obtain warmer furs for the journey. As a last idea, Andromache took shears to her hair. Now that she traveled in the clothes of a young gentleman, she declared that it was too much effort to stuff her hair into a cap every morning and keep it there. A wig-maker paid her handsomely for the long dark braid, and Andromache put the money into a purse on her belt for emergencies.

Thus fortified, Nico hitched the horses to their sleigh, and they set out to make the last leg of their journey. They took turns driving. At first, the two who did not drive sat huddled together among the baggage for warmth. But as the road grew rougher, it often happened that one person would need to walk beside the sleigh to help guide the horses through deep snow or sucking mud.

It was not hard to find the road to Smolensk. In the end, they simply traced the trail of destruction that the _Grande Armée_ had left behind in its wake. In Orsha, a merchant told them that they were now a day’s travel away from Smolensk, but warned them away from the city. “It was burned,” he said, “and it is now a desperate place, with more thieves than goods.”

Andromache thanked him for his concern, and did not argue with his assessment of the situation. That night, Josef voiced the question that Nico was certain had been on Andromache’s mind as well as his own. “What comes after?” he asked. “We will find our Frenchman in Smolensk, I think. But what then? This journey has been hard enough, and I dread the return.”

Andromache gnawed a piece of hardtack thoughtfully for a while. “Much depends on our Frenchman, I think,” she said. “If he is willing, we will leave Smolensk together.”

“Hmm. And after that?”

Andromache shrugged. “We will decide once we are four. I will not require that we stay together. If you and Nico wish to go one way and I another, I will not begrudge you your time. All that I ask is that you tell me where you plan to go.”

When they finally arrived in Smolensk, Nico wanted to collapse and weep, both from relief at having reached their destination and from distress at seeing the snow-covered, ruined city. It was exactly as their dreams of their Frenchman had shown them. The people of Smolensk had tried to cover the largest holes in their houses, but it was clear that they had had neither the time nor the men to rebuild completely after Napoleon’s second invasion of the city a month before.

Although it was currently Nico’s turn to drive, Andromache’s Russian was the best out of their group. She climbed up onto the seat next to Nico and called out to the people they passed. Finally, a woman stopped, and Andromache climbed down to speak with her. Nico could understand more Russian than he could speak, and he gathered that Andromache and the Russian woman were discussing the events of the past month and the sorts of shelter that might be available in Smolensk for three entirely unexpected and unwanted visitors.

After a certain amount of debate, Andromache managed to convince the woman that they did not require fine accommodation, and that they would be content with a roof and a fireplace. The woman gave Andromache directions that Nico could not quite follow. But when Andromache climbed back up to sit next to him, she took the reins and drove them the last few streets to an unassuming apartment block. A two-room apartment stood empty, and they hauled their trunk and valises inside.

There was a fireplace, although it was cold and empty, a suite of what had once been serviceable drawing room furniture, and some tattered curtains. The second room boasted an uncertain-looking bed, an armchair, and a washstand.

“The bed is big enough for two, I think,” Andromache said. “The couch in the other room will suit me well. You will warm each other, and I will have the coals.”

“And when we have our Frenchman with us?” Josef asked.

Andromache shrugged. “We will make do, I suppose.”

Josef moved the horses into a formerly elegant drawing room on the ground floor that looked as though it had recently housed horses of the _Grande Armée_ , while Nico and Andromache scavenged fuel. A burned French artillery cart gave them charcoal, and Nico found another empty apartment in the building with furniture that could be burned as well. They cooked potatoes and dried beef into a sort of a stew, and carried it to the table to eat it. Nico choked down only a few mouthfuls before the thought of putting more food into his mouth seemed unbearably difficult.

Josef embraced him, and Andromache reached across the table to clasp his hands. “Can you not feel his despair?” he asked them. “Every night, he prays that he will not wake. And in the days, he sits at the door of the cathedral and begs for coins and bread. All he has left is terror and despair.”

“He has us as well,” Andromache said. “We will find him tomorrow. He has not moved from that church in all this time. He is within our grasp, and we will find him. Then the dreams will cease, and we can give him the slim hope of knowing that he is not alone.”

Josef ran his hand over Nico’s hair. “One more night, my heart. One more night to give us strength, and then we will have daylight for our search. His help is at hand. And,” he chuckled a little, as if he had just thought of something amusing, “he cannot die before we reach him, at least not permanently. We do not have to concern ourselves with that, at least.”

Nico took some comfort in knowing that Josef was right, though that did not make things any easier when their dreams that night revealed that their Frenchman had managed to acquire a pistol with one bullet left and had shot himself in the mouth. Nico woke with a gasp to find himself face down in the bed with Josef sitting on top of him frantically grasping the back of his head. Even knowing that it had been a dream and that their Frenchman would wake again, it took both Josef and Nico a long time to fall asleep again after that.

In the morning, Andromache planned their day with military precision. She took her purse with the money she had obtained from selling her hair in Vilnius and went to a small black market to purchase as much extra food as she could find. “After all,” she said, “tonight we will be one more mouth to feed.”

Josef remained in their apartment to guard it, and Nico took the sleigh to the outskirts of the city until he came upon what appeared to be an abandoned dacha. Upon closer inspection, he discovered that the dacha had not exactly been abandoned; the frozen corpses of its former inhabitants still remained, in postures suggesting that the French had visited this place during their last invasion. Nico said a prayer over the bodies, and then collected bedding and clothing for a man of average size, as well as packets of tea and sugar and a string of onions from the kitchen, the only food that had not spoiled.

Back in the city, Andromache made them eat a meal, and then Josef distributed sketches he had made of their Frenchman’s face. They secured their temporary apartment using the lock from the trunk that had carried their blades and set off for the center of the city.

The Cathedral of the Dormition turned out to be enormous and situated atop a hill, so that it could be seen from all around. Now that Nico saw it, he knew exactly why the Jewish timber merchant in Tilsit had recognized it, and why their Frenchman had chosen it as his shelter. There was no possible way to miss such a distinctive building. Indeed, it seemed to be the only building in all of Smolensk that was both beautiful and intact. They made their way up the hill and found the front door of the church open.

As their eyes adjusted to the dim light of the interior, they saw both the gorgeous golden fittings of the church and the small groups of homeless people huddled in the corners, having had the same idea as their Frenchman to shelter from the winter under the holy roof. They stayed together, walking past women, children, and old men shivering in woolen rags on the cold stone floor. None of them seemed to match the drawings that Josef had made.

An extra gleam near the base of the golden baldachin caught Nico’s eye, and he went to investigate. A man sat huddled on the stairs leading up to the dais. Nico could just make out the remains of a dark blue jacket with red trimming and grubby trousers that had once been white. The man held a steel hip flask, and as he tipped his head to take a drink, Nico saw his face, and his breath caught in his throat. Their Frenchman’s hair was longer than it had been when he was shot, and he had allowed his beard to grow in, most likely for warmth, but it was undeniably the face that had haunted their dreams for nearly two months.

Fortified, their Frenchman moved to put his flask away. As he did so, he caught sight of Nico. His face, which had already glowed with an unhealthy pallor, turned gray.

“ _Nom de Dieu_ ,” he muttered.

Nico smiled at him, and extended his hand. For the first time, he was glad that their new companion was French, as his spoken French was much better than his Russian. “ _Bonjour,_ ” he said.

Their Frenchman did not move to take his offered hand, but sat frozen in astonishment.

Behind him, Nico heard the sound of Josef and Andromache’s boots on the stone floor. He turned around to wave them over, not wishing to call out and break the great silence that reigned in the cathedral space. In an instant, while he was distracted, their Frenchman reached out and seized him by the wrist.

Nico whirled to face him. He had only time for a short gasp before their Frenchman drove a long bayonet through his eye and into his head.

The worst part of dying that way was feeling the liquid remains of his eye dribbling over his cheek as he collapsed to the floor. But the best part was that it was quick. The darkness swept over him just as the shock receded and the pain began.


	4. Eyes On The Waves

  1. **Eyes On The Waves**



Nico gasped back to life to find his head in Josef’s lap. Someone had pulled the bayonet out of his eye, and even as Nico blinked, his blurred vision began to sharpen, and the last of the headache receded. Josef pulled a handkerchief from his sleeve and wiped Nico’s face with shaking hands. Nico’s eyeball sealed itself with a tiny slapping feeling that made him shudder, and then he could see the expression of relief on Josef’s face. When Josef helped him sit up, he saw their Frenchman watching in horrified disbelief as Andromache held the bayonet that he had used to kill Nico to his throat.

“Are you all right?” Josef asked.

Nico nodded. “Merely surprised, I think.”

Josef turned to their Frenchman. “That one you may have free of charge,” he said, his voice both cold and cordial at the same time. “You did not know. But do not ever do that again.”

Their Frenchman swallowed, his eyes darting between Andromache and Nico and Josef. “I . . . apologize,” he gasped. “I had no idea. I thought . . . you will think I am insane.”

“Perhaps,” Andromache said. “But perhaps not.”

Their Frenchman locked eyes with Nico. “I was expecting a thief,” he said. “They stalk this city now.”

“So we have been told,” Nico replied.

“I looked at your face, and – you must believe that this is true, though I hardly believe it myself – I knew you, _monsieur_. I have seen your face – all of your faces, now that I see you before me – in my dreams. I thought they were merely the ramblings of a fevered mind. And I . . . I was startled.”

“I believe you,” Nico said, remembering the first time he had laid eyes on Andromache and Quynh. He hauled himself to his knees and once again extended his hand to their Frenchman. This time, the man took it, offering a sheepish smile in return. Andromache slowly removed the bayonet from his throat.

“You are real,” their Frenchman said. “How can this be? It is another of the string of miracles that have marked these past weeks.”

“Not now,” Andromache said. “First, what is your name? We have known your face even as you have known ours, but we do not know your name.”

“Sébastien,” he replied. “Sébastien le Livre. I am – I _was_ a member of Emperor Napoleon’s infantry. They have made it abundantly clear that my service is no longer desired.”

Josef nodded. “We know. I am Josef. Yusuf al-Kaysani, but at the moment I am merely Josef. Your target of opportunity is Nicolò di Genova, whose friends call him Nico.”

“Which you may certainly do,” Nico added.

“And I am Andromache of Scythia,” Andromache said.

Le Livre stared at her, and then his face broke into a grin and he laughed. “And why not?” he asked. “I dreamed of a gentle lady, but now I find a seasoned warrior queen dressed as a soldier lad with the name of a race long vanished from this earth. It suits you, I think.”

“Flattery is not your strongest talent,” Andromache retorted, though she smiled as she said it. “Nico, are you recovered?”

“I am.” Nico rose to his feet, and Josef followed.

“Then it is time to take our new comrade and leave this church,” Andromache said. She held out a hand to help le Livre rise.

He shook his head and laughed again, though his laughter now had more than a tinge of bitterness. “Not I,” he said. “Though I know your faces, and I know that at least one of you has the same extraordinary affliction that has come over me, I do not know any of you. I have no cause to trust you, even this Nico who is so quick to forgive. All I wish is to return to France and see my sons again. Why should I trust you, warrior queen and her soldiers?”

Andromache smiled. “Because we are the people who have a sleigh and the food and furs to return you to your sons in France. Your own performance in that area has been remarkably poor.”

Le Livre considered this for a few moments. Then he shrugged and pushed himself to his feet. “That is good enough for me, I suppose,” he said. “Food and furs sound delightful. And might there be answers as well?”

Nico shrugged. “We will tell you what we can. Whether that will answer all of your questions is yet to be seen.”

Le Livre followed them back to the apartment easily enough, and he swore in delight when he saw it, as shabby as the place was. His first questions were easy enough to answer, as they involved the availability of food, hot water, and clothing. Nico boiled potatoes and beef with onions and put a separate pan of water over the fire to heat for tea and washing. Josef helped le Livre sort through their supply of clothing until he found enough items that fit him to make a complete suit. Water was their most abundant resource, with the snow that blanketed the city, and Andromache helped Nico to melt snow and mix it with some boiling water from the tea pan to provide a pitcher of reasonably warm wash water.

She instructed le Livre to wash himself as thoroughly as possible before he did anything else, for she would not have his fleas infesting their living quarters. Le Livre was happy to comply, and he took his wash water into the bedroom. A few moments later, the door opened just a crack, and le Livre’s old uniform flew out and onto the floor of the main room. Andromache seized the garments, cut off all of the buttons, and shoved the rest into the fireplace near where Nico was cooking.

Le Livre emerged from the bedroom looking clean and moderately well dressed, although still shabby and defeated. Nico thought he might even be handsome beneath his too-long hair and his shaggy beard, but that would come later. At least he no longer looked so obviously like a French infantryman. Nico poked the potatoes and decided that they were tender enough to eat. He drained the whole boiled mess, filled the teapot, and brought the food to the table.

“It is hardly the finest of fare, but it is hot, at least,” he said.

Le Livre thanked him and began to eat. “It is better than the bread that I have begged,” he observed. “That was made mostly of sawdust, I think. Some rye flour for seasoning.”

Nico divided the rest of the food among their plates, and the four of them ate in silence for a while, at least until le Livre had taken the first edge off of his hunger.

“You said that you had answers for me,” he said, looking at Andromache as he put another piece of potato in his mouth.

Andromache shrugged. “You cannot die,” she said. “You must have observed that much on your own by now.”

“I thought I was a revenant, clawing my way out of the shallow grave they give deserters,” le Livre admitted. “I die, and then I come back. I have not yet decided whether that is convenient or horrifying.”

Josef smiled. “Possibly a little of both,” he suggested. “We dreamed of you from the moment you were shot.”

Le Livre put down his cutlery and looked at them in surprise. “All of the different ways that I died?”

Nico shrugged.

Le Livre let out a low whistle. “My apologies. I dreamed of you as well. The Travelers, I called you. It never occurred to me that you were traveling here.”

“The dreams will stop now that we have found each other,” Andromache said, and le Livre barked out a mirthless laugh.

“That is good. I wish to return to the dreams of my family. The good dreams, if I may beg your pardon.”

Nico and Josef glanced at each other. Blood family could mean a cruel parting. “You have family?” Nico asked.

Le Livre nodded. “I have three sons. The youngest, Jean-Pierre, is an infant, and my wife died at his birth. I believe her sister has care of my boys. I must return to France to claim them again. This is an unexpected boon.”

Nico burned with questions for le Livre; he had had the pleasure of christening his infant niece, and he could not imagine that le Livre had left his sons voluntarily, especially with their mother so newly dead. But Andromache spoke before he could ask anything.

“We are your family now,” she said. “It would be best for you to accept that, as it will spare you a great deal of heartbreak in the end.”

“You are my family?” Le Livre snorted. “I barely know you. None of you are even French, let alone any of my kin.”

“And yet we are alike in this most fundamental of ways,” Nico said. “We cannot grow old, and we cannot die. It would surprise you how much this sets us apart from the rest of humanity.”

Le Livre was silent for a while as he contemplated that idea. “I will not ask how old you truly are, then,” he said. “Perhaps I am not ready to know that. Why has this happened to us?”

“We do not know,” Andromache said. “The whims of this world are not always understood by mortal man, or immortal man, for that matter. All you can do now is resign yourself to your fate.”

“And let us become as family to you,” Josef added. “We do not have much at the moment, but all that we have is yours. You are our brother, Sébastien le Livre, and we will honor that bond above all else.”

It was clear that they all had many more questions for each other, but Andromache put an end to the evening by clearing their plates away. “We will talk more in the morning,” she said, “but tonight we will sleep. Eventually, we will decide where to go, but we can stay here for a few days, at least.”

That suited Nico perfectly; as dilapidated as their makeshift home was, it would be a comfort to stay in one place for a few days. He helped Andromache to arrange the bedding he had taken from the dacha into a pallet for le Livre on the floor of the main room near the banked fire.

“I know that you have frozen to death at least three times,” he said, when le Livre raised his eyebrows at the effort. “They say that freezing is one of the least unpleasant ways to die, but you and I, we know better than that.”

“We do,” le Livre said slowly. “Thank you for this. For the food, for the shelter . . . for the answers, few and frustrating as they are.”

Nico laughed, clapped le Livre on the shoulder, and then retired to the bedroom, where Josef had already begun to warm the bed for them.

The weeks of traveling had been exhausting, and Josef seemed just as pleased as Nico that they would not move on for several days. He waited until Nico had said his prayers and crawled into bed, and then tucked Nico firmly against his body.

“Tonight, we will sleep without dreams,” he said. “Shall we begin this restful night with a small celebration?” He ground his hips against Nico’s to leave no doubt whatsoever about what kind of celebration he had in mind.

Nico smiled and wound his arms around Josef’s neck to pull him in for a kiss that was warmer than anything in Smolensk in December had any right to be.

The next morning, Nico woke from a blessedly dreamless sleep before dawn, which was not difficult in the depths of the Russian winter. The bedroom was icy cold, but the bed was a nest of warmth with Josef wrapped around him. Unable to return to sleep, but unwilling to disturb Josef, Nico lay quietly and considered their new brother-in-arms. When he was not putting a bayonet through Nico’s eye, le Livre seemed to be a decent enough man, though rather opaque. Of course, he had only just met them, and, as he had stated over dinner, he did not know them very well yet. Nico suspected that they had not yet, in fact, seen the real Sébastien le Livre. It would take time and care, but he hoped that the man’s true personality would emerge.

Josef snuffled half-awake behind him. “I can hear you thinking,” he murmured. He clasped Nico’s hand, and Nico brought their joined hands together over his heart. “Was your night as restful as mine?” Josef asked.

Nico smiled. “Nearly. I recall no dreams, and that in itself is a pleasure.”

“Mmm. I know what else is a pleasure.” Josef peppered small kisses over the back of Nico’s neck. “You are thinking very loudly this morning. What occupies your mind?”

Nico sighed. “I was thinking of our – le Livre. He has a name, and I must remember to use it.”

“What do you make of him?”

“I think . . .” Nico paused, trying to gather his scattered, contradictory thoughts into a coherent whole. “I worry that he will not be an easy man to love.”

“He did stab you through the eye, although friendships have grown from less promising beginnings. I seem to recall that I did something similar to you at our first meeting.”

“And I more than returned the gesture.” Nico brought their joined hands to his lips and kissed Josef’s fingers.

Josef chuckled, his breath warm against Nico’s skin. “Why do you worry about loving him? It has not even been a full day since we met. All of your other friends you have grown to love in their time. And we have all the time there is to learn to love this le Livre.”

Nico frowned a little bit in the darkness of the bedroom. “It was merely something that the priest at St. Hedwig told me, just before we left. It seems so far away now.”

“As kind as he may have been, that priest did not know you nearly so well as I do,” Josef said. “I need not remind you to love others, for I know you will do that all of your own accord, in your time. That is your true nature, Nicolò, soldier of Genova.” The last of his words slurred as Josef slipped back into sleep.

Nico could not follow as easily. He was fully awake, and he wanted a cup of hot tea inside him. He disentangled himself from Josef, leaving kisses on most of his fingers as he went, pulled on stockings and trousers, and wrapped himself in a fur robe to venture into the main room.

Le Livre was awake as well, rolled in his blankets and contemplating the room. He offered Nico a friendly smile, and came willingly when Nico suggested tea. They did not speak while they built up the fire and waited for the water to boil. But when they finally had the pot of tea steaming between them, le Livre broke the silence.

“That was the most restful night I have had since I was shot,” he said. “If nothing else, I thank you for this.”

“It was restful for us as well,” Nico replied. “You are our brother, and we will care for you as such.”

Le Livre’s mouth quirked in an odd half-smile. “So, we are all to be one happy family, is that it?” he asked. “You and Josef are my brothers, and – what was her name? Andromache? She is my sister?”

Nico poured the tea and found the sugar packet where it had been left on the table. “Most recently, she posed as my aunt for several years. But, yes. As a rule, she deals with me as with an annoying yet beloved younger brother.”

He handed the sugar packet to le Livre, who laughed. “What an odd family we are to be, then,” le Livre said, scraping a little bit of sugar off of the lump for his tea. “Whatever Josef was doing to you last night did not seem especially brotherly.”

Nico was glad that he was facing away from le Livre at that moment. He knew that he was pale enough that every blush showed on his skin, and he also knew that the warmth currently flooding his face was not from the tea. “You saw us?” he asked, and it was an effort to keep his voice calm.

“Heard you,” le Livre said. “The walls in this building are thinner than one might expect for such a cold country.”

Ah. Nico spotted a way to turn the conversation to put them both back on equal footing. “Then, if you did not see us,” he said, “how do you know that what you heard was not what I was doing to Josef?”

Le Livre was silent for a long moment. Then he burst out laughing. “How true, my friend Nico, how true! Come, is there anything stronger than tea in this house?”

Nico sighed and shook his head, the corners of his mouth already turning up in a little smile. “Not at the moment, _monsieur_ le Livre. Perhaps we will go to the black market later today and see what we can trade.”

Le Livre returned Nico’s smile. “If I am to call you Nico and know such things about you and Josef, then you must call me Sébastien. It is only fair. And what of Andromache, eh? My sister, or my . . . _sister_?”

“Your sister only, Sébastien,” Andromache said with a chuckle, as she sat up on the couch and immediately pulled the blanket over her shirt. “Vodka I am happy to provide, and sisterly companionship, too. As for the rest, you must seek that on your own. Nico and Josef discovered their own solution, and you may seek yours.”

“Our own solution to what?” Josef asked, appearing in the doorway nearly fully dressed, as he always was before his morning prayers.

Nico rose from the fire and brought Josef a cup of tea and a thorough morning kiss. “Love and companionship. But not vodka.”

“Ah, well, then.” Josef sipped his tea. “I take it you are well on your way to resolving your questions.” He turned to Sébastien. “Go with Andromache for vodka. But not until we have breakfasted and spent some time enjoying the warmth of the fire.”

He drew Nico to sit on the threadbare carpet before the hearth and pulled Sébastien over to his other side. Andromache also came to sit with Sébastien, and their family became four instead of three.


	5. On The Isle Of St. Helena

  1. **On The Isle Of St. Helena**



Although their immortal bodies could heal from any injury, their immortal souls were not quite so resilient. Even undying warriors needed time to recover from the exhaustion of a lengthy journey into the heart of Russia, as well as to plan the inevitable journey away. And, as Nico recalled from his own first weeks with Josef so many centuries earlier, a newly-awakened immortal needed time and quiet to adjust to such a strange new condition. Sébastien asked a few more questions that morning, although he seemed to like the answers less and less the more he asked.

Shortly past midday, Andromache took Sébastien to the black market to sell the buttons she had cut off of his uniform. Ostensibly, the money would buy more food and perhaps a little bit of oil for light, but Nico suspected that a certain amount would go for vodka instead. While Andromache and Sébastien were at the market, Joe took his turn to drive out to the outskirts of the city to join the rest of the citizens of Smolensk in raiding abandoned dachas and guard towers. Nico decided that it would be useful to know who else lived in the building and spent some time knocking on doors.

Most of the apartments were cold and abandoned like their own, and many of these showed severe structural damage from Napoleon’s passages through the city. Nico scavenged what he could from these rooms, and ended up with his own fair pocketful of buttons to sell. In one apartment, an old lady huddled with her granddaughter, the two of them nearly frozen. Nico spent some time scavenging a few bits of fuel to get their fire burning again, though he feared that he had only delayed their deaths rather than prevented them. Still, now he knew that they were there, and it would do no harm to look in on them tomorrow.

Andromache and Sébastien did bring back more potatoes and salt beef with their vodka, as well as a few wrinkled onions and beets that turned the evening stew a deep red. Andromache even hinted that there might be bread or pickles the next day. Sébastien did not seem terribly impressed by this. His mood had turned sour, and he shot bitter glances at Andromache all through dinner.

“What troubles you?” Josef asked him. “This life is a difficult thing to accept, but any of us would be happy to offer you a listening ear or the benefit of our own experiences.”

“I have had little else all day,” Sébastien growled, and cut another glance at Andromache.

Andromache shrugged. “He wishes to return to France to reclaim his sons. I told him what I thought of that plan. We argued.”

Dinner was a cold and unpleasant affair, but somehow, without speaking much, Andromache and Sébastien managed to come to a sort of détente and drowned enough of their sorrows in vodka that they were able to settle down to sleep.

Sébastien’s screams woke them all in the middle of the night. Nico and Josef stumbled into the main room to find Sébastien weeping in Andromache’s arms. Nico wondered if the vodka had been cut with some kind of poison that had caused Sébastien to hallucinate, but the reality turned out to be much worse.

“I thought that the dreams would stop,” he moaned. “You said that the dreams would stop, now that we are together.”

Nico glanced at Josef, but Josef was as baffled as Nico. So Nico crouched down next to Andromache and put his hand on Sébastien’s shoulder. “Will you tell us your dream?” he asked.

“I dreamed of an iron maiden, lost deep in the ocean,” Sébastien said. “Within it was a woman, young and beautiful. And she drowned, for all eternity she drowned, and she _screamed_ as she drowned.”

Nico’s hand clasped Josef’s before he was even aware that he had moved, and he stumbled, as if something enormous and overpowering had hit him. It had not occurred to him that Sébastien would dream of Quynh, but in hindsight, it seemed all but inevitable. Josef sighed and dropped his head to rest on Nico’s shoulder. Nico held his free hand out to Andromache, but she would not let Sébastien go. She turned to stare at Nico, perhaps intending to speak, though no words escaped. Her eyes burned with the tears that she had not allowed herself to shed since Nico and Josef had cut her free of her chains and then asked why Quynh was no longer at her side.

Nico looked from one stricken member of his family to the next. He had only two arms, and could not embrace all of them at once, so he wriggled his hand loose from Josef’s and rose to his feet. He pulled Andromache’s bedding from the couch and brought it to Sébastien’s pallet. Josef watched him, and nodded as soon as he understood Nico’s intent. He disappeared into the bedroom and returned shortly bearing their own pillows, blanket and featherbed. Nico flashed him a grateful smile and began to arrange all the bedding into one large bivouac on the floor.

“None of us should be alone tonight,” he said softly.

Andromache managed a watery little smile. “No,” she said. “You are kind, to think of that.”

Sébastien raised no objection, so all four of them piled together onto the mass of bedding, making sure that Sébastien was in the middle, held between Andromache and Nico. They were so close together that Nico could just barely hear Andromache whispering an ancient lullaby into Sébastien’s ear as he slipped back into sleep.

Sébastien’s mood improved the next morning, but not very much. Though he was less openly hostile, he now sank into a deep melancholy, despairing of ever being able to leave the nearly-deserted hellscape of cold and deprivation that was Smolensk. In an effort to show Sébastien that it was in fact possible for immortals to remain in the world, Nico invited Sébastien to accompany him to visit the old woman and her granddaughter who also lived in their building. They collected armfuls of makeshift fuel and made their way to the other apartment.

Nico was pleased to see that his earlier visit had not been entirely in vain. The old woman and the granddaughter were still alive, and the fuel he had brought the day before had warmed them enough that the granddaughter had been able to scavenge and cook a little meal for them. The old woman was even warm enough to joke about her good fortune that not one, but two handsome young men had come to visit them that day. The granddaughter seemed so pleased that her grandmother was able to joke that Nico decided to invite Josef to accompany them tomorrow, just to see what the old woman would say then.

They made sure not to overstay their welcome, and Sébastien looked thoughtful as they left. Thoughtful was better than morose, and Nico decided to encourage this mood by asking Sébastien what occupied his mind.

Sébastien shrugged. “I marched with the Emperor through this city in August, and I watched it burn. I did not think, then, of the people who remained. I assumed, as I suppose the others in my company must have done, that the city had been fully evacuated. I did not expect to return under such circumstances.”

“That, at least, is a point in favor of immortality,” Nico said. “We may always return to the places of our failure and work to atone for our crimes.”

Sébastien looked at him strangely, but said nothing. Nico and Josef had already explained their odd history to him. Sébastien had accepted it as he had accepted everything else about them, quietly, and giving the impression that, as unusual as their lives and histories were, they were not the most unusual things he had experienced in the past two months, and there was no point in dwelling on it. Instead, they moved on to the black market so that Nico could sell the buttons he had collected and make sure that the money bought more food than vodka.

That evening, perhaps buoyed by the bread and pickles that accompanied the stew, as well as the companionship of the previous night, Sébastien finally relaxed enough to share some of his own history. They had known that he was a deserter from the first dream that had woken them in Berlin, a few short weeks and a lifetime ago. But they had not expected to hear that the only reason that Sébastien had been part of the _Grande Armée_ in the first place was that his military service was itself a punishment for an entirely different crime.

“I was a forger,” he told them, taking a sip of tea and glancing at their faces to gauge their reactions.

“What did you forge?” Andromache asked.

“Signatures, often. The occasional will. And I had a very fine judicial seal that I carved myself in 1808. I was relatively skilled at creating _assignats_ when I was younger, but of course that skill is no longer useful. I was teaching myself to re-create a note for five hundred francs when I was caught.”

Andromache gave a low whistle. “I am impressed that you had a note for five hundred francs to use as a model.”

“I had wanted one for several years,” Sébastien said. “It happened that I had to travel to Verdun shortly before Jean-Pierre was born, and I met a thief at the inn where I stayed. He needed a signature from his neighbor’s dead grandmother, and I asked for five hundred francs in paper in exchange. The pattern of the note turned out to be far more intricate than the old _assignats_.”

Josef laughed. “An artist’s learning is never complete.”

“Do you think that paper money will ever become popular?” Nico asked.

Sébastien nodded. “The Emperor is against it, but I think that his objections will not outlive him. Coins are heavy, noisy, expensive to mint, and all too easy to clip or to adulterate.”

“But paper money?” Nico asked. “Something so insubstantial does not seem right.”

“Just because it is less substantial does not mean that it does not have its advantages,” Andromache countered. “Paper is sturdier than it seems, and good ink lasts. I was skeptical the first time that I saw writing done with ink rather than pressed into a clay tablet, but it is remarkably convenient. Errors were not easily corrected in clay, the tablets could be used only once, and it was a nuisance to store them. The only person I ever knew who did store them was that copper merchant in Ur, and all who knew him thought that he was either criminal or touched in the head.”

Sébastien choked on his tea a little bit at Andromache’s hint about her true age, but recovered himself. “Nevertheless, I believe that there is a future in paper money,” he said. “That is why I set out to learn how to forge it in the first place.”

“Traveling documents as well,” Andromache observed. “We had little official difficulty on our journey, but much of it was within Prussia, and the rest . . . well, a war-ravaged land is less interested in examining travel papers than it could be. I suspect that the skills to forge traveling papers as well as paper money will become highly useful sooner than we might expect.”

“Is that to be my fate?” Sébastien asked. “Am I to become the forger in the employ of immortal mercenaries?”

Andromache shrugged. “There are worse fates. It is skilled work, with a steady and appreciative audience, and the usual penalties no longer apply to you.”

“That is true.” Sébastien looked thoughtful, and thinned his tea with a splash of vodka. He did not say much more for the rest of the meal, replying only to direct questions, and then with short answers of one or two words only. He declined Nico’s offer to sleep all together in the bivouac on the floor again, saying that he was a grown man and needed no more nurse-maiding now that he knew about Quynh. Nico thought that he looked unbearably sad, and told Josef that night as they lay together in their bed.

“It is a shock for him,” Josef said. “To realize that he has become something so – so _other_ , so beyond human, and we three strangers are the only ones to share his condition. I suppose it is harder for him than it was for us. We had each other, after all. He has no one.”

“That is true,” Nico said. “Still, there must be a way to reach him. The only thing worse than dying of despair must be the inability to die of despair.”

Josef held Nico a little tighter, as if he did not want to let his fortune slip out of his arms. It took Nico a while to fall asleep, but just before he did so, a thought struck him. He counted days on his fingers and realized that he was just in time to make a plan work.

The next morning, Nico volunteered to make the now-daily trip to the black market for food. He asked Sébastien and Josef to take fuel to the old woman and her granddaughter, partly to ensure that neither one would follow him, and partly to amuse the old woman with yet another handsome young man to ogle. He did ask Andromache if she wanted to come with him, but she declined, saying that she had to plan their next move. So it was that Nico went alone to the market. He carried another pocketful of buttons to sell, as well as his own watch chain, though not the pocket watch itself; the watch had been a gift and he could not quite bear to part with it just yet.

Fortunately, the watch chain brought enough rubles for his extra purchase, and Nico returned to the apartment pleased with the results of his visit to the market. He waited until dinner was finished, and they were preparing to go to bed. Josef was occupied with his evening prayers, and Nico picked up his extra purchase and went back into the main room to kneel down by Sébastien’s pallet.

“Nico,” Sébastien said, a puzzled half-smile on his face. “Did you forget anything?”

“Almost,” Nico replied. “We have been traveling so long that I nearly forgot the date. It is Christmas Eve tonight, Sébastien. And no one should be far from home and family without a Christmas gift.” He offered Sébastien the pair of sturdy leather gloves that he had purchased with the money from his watch chain. “A good Christmas to you, Sébastien.”

Sébastien took the gloves and turned them over several times to look at the smooth brown leather, the tight stitching, and the little frill of rabbit fur at the wrists. They were not new, but they were well-made, the best that Nico could find. Sébastien slid the gloves onto his hands, and they appeared to fit. A slow smile spread over his face.

“Thank you,” he said. “I have never had gloves so fine.”

Nico smiled. “You are an artist. An artist’s hands should be protected.”

“A forger.”

“An artist. The art you create is outside the law, but it is art nonetheless.”

Sébastien contemplated his gloved hands for another moment, and then raised his head to look Nico in the eye. “You are a kind man, Nico. A few days ago, my bayonet was in your eye, and tonight you have given me such a Christmas gift. I had almost forgotten what kindness was, over my imprisonment and military service.”

Nico could feel himself blushing, but did not turn his face away. “It is as I told you. We are bound to each other with ties beyond blood. Our lives are long and difficult. I would not see yours be harder than it must.”

“I did not realize that it was Christmas. I spent long enough sitting in that church. Surely the priest would have said something.”

“They do not celebrate it on the same day here in the East,” Nico said. “It is something to do with a difference in the calendar. Andromache explained it to me once, but I have forgotten.”

Sébastien laughed. “Perhaps I shall ask her myself, then. I am sorry that I have no gift for you, to return your kindness to me.”

“You have given me a new brother,” Nico said. “Our family is small and secretive, and it cheers me that we are now one more.”

Perhaps the gloves had helped to remind Sébastien that, although he was immortal, he was still a man. Or perhaps it was simply the opportunity to sit and talk quietly with Nico in the evening. Or it might even have been that he had finally resigned himself to his situation. But however it had happened, Sébastien’s hostility and melancholy seemed to lift the next day, on Christmas morning. He was able to sit down with Andromache after they had breakfasted for a lengthy conversation about the future. For the first time in days, Nico had hope that Andromache would finally let them leave Smolensk.

He suggested this to Josef as they sat together outside their apartment door after they finished their now-traditional visit to the old woman and her granddaughter. Josef nodded thoughtfully, still smiling from the old woman’s enthusiastic welcome. “As charming as our neighbors are, I cannot say that I will miss this city once we are free of it,” he said. “I have had more than enough of cold and darkness.”

“We cannot return to Berlin,” Nico said, unable to hide his disappointment at acknowledging that fact. “We must begin yet another life in yet another place.”

Josef slung an arm around Nico’s shoulders. “It has been at least a century since we last resided in Malta,” he offered. “Shall we return there? Perhaps a familiar destination might suit you.”

The offer of Malta was distinctly tempting, but the islands had been contested for over a dozen years, and Nico did not want to return to a place he had long considered a safe haven while it was in the midst of political turmoil. In fact, he thought that he had spent more than enough time living in territories ravaged by war and occupation, and no part of Europe appealed to him at the moment. Then, another idea struck him. There was a place that did not answer to any of the monarchs of Europe, that was warm and dry and at peace, and that might be a haven of sorts.

He wrapped his arms around Josef, who pulled him a little closer. “Josef, my love . . . what would you say to Jerusalem?”

Josef was silent for a moment. “We have not been in Jerusalem in many years.”

They had returned once or twice, briefly, since their initial encounter on the field of battle outside the city’s walls. But they had never spent more than a week or two in Jerusalem, and Nico’s memories of the city were still largely filled with blood, pain, and screaming. But now the Holy City seemed to call to him, as if this might be the moment to make peace with his experiences there. He tried to explain this to Josef, but he stumbled over his own words and fell silent after a while.

But Josef, dear, loving Josef seemed to know exactly what Nico was trying to say. “I am glad that we have had this time to welcome Sébastien into our fold,” he said. “It is a profound event, as much for us as it was for him, I think. Perhaps we both need to return to the birthplace of our own immortality and allow ourselves to appreciate the changes that time has wrought, both in Jerusalem and in ourselves.”

Josef had always had a way with words. Nico reached out and took Josef’s face in his hands and kissed him as deeply and as carefully as he could. “Thank you,” he said.

Josef picked up one of Nico’s hands and kissed each fingertip. “You are loved, my Nicolò. Wherever you travel, however long you may live, you are wrapped in love. Do not ever forget that.”

That night, over dinner, Andromache announced that she and Sébastien had come to an agreement. She would return him to France, where he could sink or swim at his own leisure. She herself would take up residence in Lisbon, where she planned to offer her services to the British and Portuguese soldiers fighting Napoleon on the Iberian peninsula. “If Sébastien has need of me, he may send for me,” she said. “If he does not, perhaps I will take ship to Brazil. It has been some time since I visited the New World.”

“We will wish you well on your journeys,” Nico said. “It has been an honor to be your nephew for these few years.”

“We travel to Jerusalem,” Josef added. “We will not abandon either of you; should you have need of us, send word. But for now, we go to seek our peace in the East.”

Their last few days in Smolensk were warmed by their anticipation of new destinations, new homes, and new purpose. And when they did set out, just before the new year of 1813, they had already determined that they would travel together as far as Vienna. They would part from a place of plenty rather than a place of desolation. And they would part as a family of four, with unbreakable promises to reunite in the future and to come to each other’s side in times of need.

END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to all who have read and enjoyed this story! It’s been a fun dive into history for me, and I hope that you’ve enjoyed the journey as well. At this moment, Jerusalem is part of the Ottoman Empire, and it’s a bit of a schlubby backwater, tiny and crowded. Jewish and Christian immigrants will start to arrive over the next few decades, for very different reasons, and the New City will start to be built in the 1860s, but that’s still many years away. At least for the time being, Jerusalem might be a place where Josef and Nico can find a little peace.


End file.
